I’ve always been a little ambivalent about my birthday, and not just because the number will soon be equal to a state highway speed limit.
Once your birthdays no longer involve all the pizza you can eat until you get sick and a clown who makes balloons into animals, the novelty and point of the celebration does tend to wear off. I mean, I haven’t quite been at this long enough that I’m setting any records or can expect to hear my name during the weather portion of “The Today Show” yet (Do they still do that? I’m pretty much an ESPN guy in the morning. And they definitely don’t mention birthdays.). While there are a few miles on the odometer, having survived another year doesn’t exactly put me in select company, at least at this point.
But the real ambivalence comes because my birthday falls on the single dumbest holiday in the pantheon of dumb holidays that includes Arbor Day and National Take Your Anaconda to Work Day (which, providentially, never falls on National Take Your Mouse to Work Day.).
I was born on Groundhog Day.
Up front, let’s get this out of the way. I don’t get up onFeb. 2 and determine when spring will arrive. If you want to know what it’s going to be like for the next six weeks, the Weather Channel has an app. I don’t know. Neither does the groundhog, but that doesn’t keep people from building an industry around the predictive powers of an animal too stupid to realize that dark thing on the ground that moves when it does is his shadow.
Now most of us approach Groundhog Day with the same level of interest usually reserved for the vernal equinox or Boxing Day.
Except we actually know what a groundhog is. But in Pennsylvania, apparently, it’s big doin’s, complete with music, drinking and food.
Which leads one to ask, just how obscure and goofy does something have to be people in Pennsylvania won’t use it as an excuse for a party?
Anyone cutting loose just because a woodchuck pokes its head out of its burrow
a lot more excited about beer and brats than I am.
And that’s saying a lot.
And who exactly has enough free time to be able to sit in the woods for years on end, observing groundhogs and the weather long enough to come up with the whole Feb.2-shadow-six-more-weeks-ofwinter connection? Must have been a government grant involved.
My exhaustive research (OK, I checked out Wikipedia in between scanning basketball scores) reveals the Lakers stink and the Hogs can’t win on the road. But it also shows Groundhog Day is actually based on an ancient European legend that says about this time of year, a magic badger or bear appears, heralding the coming of spring. To which I say, great. Some guy in Germany gets a cool bear that can saw a lady in half or make a quarter appear out of your ear. I get a rodent that’s afraid of its shadow. For that we left the Old Country?
For some time now, I’ve been trying to convince people (well, my immediate family, anyway) what we really should acknowledge on Feb. 2 is the birthday of the great Irish author James Joyce. Unfortunately, I’mnot getting a lot of traction with that.
For one thing, my kids have no idea who James Joyce is. When I try to explain he wrote “Ulysses” and “The Dubliners” and a lot of other books they’ll start and never fi nish in college, they ask me if they’re like “Downton Abbey.” And I tell them since I can’t really understand what anyone on the show is saying, yes, they’re very much alike. I think.
As with all things, it could be worse. I could be one of those Christmas babies. If you think playing second fiddle to a rodent is tough, imagine getting stuck way in the back with a kazoo every Dec. 25. You can wrap those presents any way you want; it’s still hard not to feel, volume-wise, like you’re getting the short end of the stick. And imagine the crushing ego blow that comes when you realize all the decorations and celebrating really aren’t for you.
And if that doesn’t help, I should always remember: My birthday could have been on April 15.
GARY SMITH IS A RECOVERING JOURNALIST LIVING IN ROGERS.
Opinion, Pages 5 on 01/31/2013